Memory Alpha:Ten Forward/Archive 2005
Episode References I see everywhere differing styles of referencing episodes; and cannot find in the Manual of Style anything specific that denotes what the SOP is. Personally, on the articles I've worked on, I use: : In-Line: (TNG: "Encounter at Farpoint") : or as a list: * VOY: "Caretaker" And while I ensure to maintain continuity within my own articular contributions; I do not see that within MA as a whole. I would like to keep an eye out and make conformation when I need to refarding episode references, but need first to know what the standard is. | THOR 21:38, 3 Feb 2005 (CET) : It won't help you when I tell you from the german Memory Alpha. I can't remind me of any rule of style that tells me how to arrange such references and so everyone has his own style. I once brought up the very same issue on the german 10F which led to (TNG: "Encounter at Farpoint"); italic to emphase on the meta-trek nature and quto-marks for titles. -- Florian K 11:13, 8 Feb 2005 (CET) : I'm still looking to get guidance on this as well as the same below, but I'm loathe to "nag"; have I addressed this issue in the wrong forum? | THOR 20:16, 23 Feb 2005 (GMT) :: That style is what has traditionally been used, since the start of the wiki, for referencing episodes. I will add something to this effect to Memory Alpha:Cite your sources, and possibly the Manual of Style. I have noticed the italicizing of said references creeping in, and have reverted to the original style when found for consistency. -- Michael Warren | ''Talk'' 00:22, 24 Feb 2005 (GMT) ::: I'm still seeing users using italicization with episode references. I am hesitant to continually change them: checking both Memory Alpha:Cite your sources and Manual of Style this doesn't seem to have been added as official SOP; and as such I have no regulatory backing or standing to be making these changes other than this 10F thread. -- THOR 13:39, 18 Mar 2005 (EST) :::: Well, since it is said to emphasise book titles it is only logical to emphasise episode and movie titles as well. It does also merge with the style to indent and italicise background information. Keeping a list without italicisation is also an analogon to keeping an entire background section un-italicised. (''see: Episodenverweise) -- Kobi - [[ :Kobi|( )]] 14:06, 18 Mar 2005 (EST) ::: My take on this is as follows: I understand everyone's point here, but to me - despite "professional writing guides", it is, frankly, rather distracting when I am trying read an article and see non-italicized items that are from '''outside the "Trek-universe" POV', as I have yet to see a good explaination as to why it must be included inside the "Trek-universe" POV when it really belongs to ours (the outside). That certainly was not what was in mind when they designed the MLA guide -- that is jumping in and out of "reality". Natually if I see it in italics I will skip over it or click it if I wish to go to the page, otherwise there are several cases where in the middle of a paragraph there will be three long unitalicized episode references in a row and it really takes away from the natural flow of the fiction. --Gvsualan 22:06, 27 Feb 2005 (GMT) :::: I understand this argument, and have some sympathy with it; however, what I'' find distracting is inconsistency in the format between articles, or, worse, within a given article. If there were a consensus that all inline references should be in italics, I might support making a bot to make those changes (if such a thing is possible). However, as things stand now the majority of entries are in (roughly) MLA standard, which puts names of television series and films in italics, but puts individual episodes unitalicized in quotation marks. Barring a consensus that we should change this, I'm going to continue to put citations in the current standard form. I won't edit an article to change an italicized citation alone, but if I'm making other changes to an article I'll probably change the citations to the current standard while I'm at it. --Josiah Rowe 15:21, 28 Mar 2005 (EST) I went ahead and made some changes to Memory Alpha:Cite your sources about citations. I myself could not find what the preferred citation form should be so I put in the first and most seen, as far as I can tell, form -- Q 01:51, 28 Mar 2005 (EST) : That page ought to have something about film citation as well. The standard has been that the names of TV series and films are put in italics (per MLA form), but I hesitate to put that on the page myself until the subject has been aired a bit more fully here. --Josiah Rowe 15:21, 28 Mar 2005 (EST) : Maybe a short vote (for example over a ten day period) on the two styles to see which is the preferred one by the archivists. I did some quick research on citations and found several styles and some depend on if you are writing an article or a book. There is however something to be said to keep the citations styles between the different MA's the same. -- Q 04:18, 3 Apr 2005 (EDT) ::::: I'm a big supporter of italics for all information that is out of Trek POV -- this includes episode names when the occur in or behind paragraphs. I know some users are making an effort to remove this style, but that seems preemptive -- there's never been a clear consensus on it. ::::: One think i'd like to do away with is italicizing alternate timelines -- the events of an alternate timeline don't take place from "our" POV, therefore they should not be styled so -- besides, there is always confusion over what is alternate -- for example, what happened on Earth in "Storm Front" is alternate, but the events that occurred aboard ship was "real" -- the people all went home remembering having lived that -- it was a "real" part of their lives and timeline that they visited another timeline, therefore those events arent covered ::::: Since alternate timelines are ambiguous anyway, i dont see any real way to conclude what really happened in the end of some of the more complex ones -- so italicizing them is a really uninformative and distracting feature. -- Captain Mike K. Barteltalk 15:48, 3 Apr 2005 (EDT) :::::: I certainly recognize my name when it's ''not said, but I would like to clarify my position on this subject: :::::: I do no espouse to "support" one variety of reference standardization over another. I just want defined clarity on what the standard should be. I now make changes based on Memory_Alpha:Cite_your_sources, but beforehand I simply wanted some standard; I chose the variety that I did (the same that was added to the cite your sources page) because it's what I felt I saw more frequently and proliferously, therefore making it easier to change fewer pages to an already unofficially stated standard. :::::: As for what preferences I do have: I suppose I would prefer the italicization of all OOC (out of character) information (episode/movie references, background information, notes, bloopers, tidbits, etc) and the indention of alternate timelines/universes. I would support wiki-linking as frequently as the majority prefers, but personally lean towards once per article -- or once per section for articles long enough to garner tables of contents. That's my 3¢ — THOR 11:32, 6 Apr 2005 (EDT) :::::I certainly support indentation over italicization for alternate universe happenings. -- Captain Mike K. Barteltalk 11:43, 6 Apr 2005 (EDT) Python Wikipedia Bot Memory Alpha is now being supported by the Python Wikipedia Bot Framework http://sourceforge.net/projects/pywikipediabot/. -- Head 11:34, 24 Feb 2005 (GMT) : After some research I found https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1118907&group_id=93107&atid=603141 and http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=6636372&forum_id=36014. It reads that this Bot is now enabled for Memory Alpha but I think it's not in use yet. Are there any plans for bot-policies what-so-ever? -- Florian - [[ :Florian K|'' ]] 12:35, 24 Feb 2005 (GMT) ::Could we please get some opinions on this topic? We of MA/de would like to use this bot in order to set interwiki links for episodes and categories. -- Kobi - [[ :Kobi|( )]] 10:04, 7 Mar 2005 (GMT) :::My main concern is that if it is used, will it have an effect on the performanc of MA ?. I often noticed that it can take 5+ seconds to load a page, from my point of view MA is sluggish. Using this bot might increase this IMHO -- Q 18:18, 9 Mar 2005 (GMT) ::::I just read some of the wikimedia articles about bots, and wouldn't be opposed to have ''some bots on MA as well. We should adopt these policies, though and, regarding the recent performance problems, the bot should definitely be throttled... -- Cid Highwind 20:05, 9 Mar 2005 (GMT) :::::True the server performence is one of the most valid argument against bots. On the it edited up to five pages per minute which sounds about fair if there are no other edits around. Due to the size of Memory Alpha only a few bots are necessary, I'd say one for interwiki links, one for categories (maybe) and another one for tables. In MA/de we are a bit ahead and already did set up a Policy. However there is still time to discuss this, because the bot framework has a minor bug with German Umlaute, so my main intention to use the bot as interwiki link putter is a bit delayed. -- Kobi - [[ :Kobi|( )]] 08:43, 10 Mar 2005 (GMT) : Speaking of performance, seems like all wikicities are currently running on ross.bomis.com, which is overloaded in some kind. Although other wikicities have reponse-times lower than 1 or 2 seconds. If you have a random Memory Alpha article, you can read something like this within the HTML-source: "Served by ross.bomis.com in 4.61 secs." If that would be something about database-size, Creatures-Wiki should have similar performance-issues. Must be something about Memory Alpha, since dutch, german an english versions seem to be slower than they should be. Perhaps it's all imaginary.. -- Florian - [[ :Florian K|'' ]] 13:01, 14 Mar 2005 (GMT) ::This is no longer the case since Memory Alpha and Wikicities are now running on three of their own servers in addition to that ross.bomis.com one. See Wikicities:Technical support for details. Angela 22:35, 30 Mar 2005 (EST) ::I'd support a regulation to put a restrictive throttle on bots here to prevent server flood -- but i think there's a lot that could be done with them. -- Captain Mike K. Barteltalk 22:36, 26 Mar 2005 (EST) I went ahead to create the page Memory Alpha:Bot which is now a translation of the bot policy we did set up at MA/de. Angela did also put bot flags to User:Morn and User:DataMA, so that their edits can be removed from the recent changes. -- Kobi - [[ :Kobi|( )]] 07:01, 2 Apr 2005 (EST) : At the moment we are somewhat blocked in MA/de (and MA/nl) since both bots are "normal" users. No-one in MA:de or MA:nl has steward-privileges and we must wait until Jason will "promote" someone. Without bot-flag enabled, all batch-processes will penetrate the "recent changes" log which is bad for normal users (thinking of 200 changes a day or more). @Dan and Harry: Will you please set bot-flag as soon as possible on MA:de? -- Florian - ✍ talk 10:41, 6 Apr 2005 (EDT) Do we need a mailinglist? Since we came to wikicities there's an option of mailing-lists (see left hand navigation). Do we need a mailing-list? We have wiki-pages (e.g. Ten Forwards) on all three languages, we have a message board, user talk pages... And though I like the idea of (one) mailing-list for all three versions to have a central announcement method for important stuff which could affect all of us, since the message board doesn't work; it's too inconvenient to have a regular look at the board plus there are just a few archivists. This mailing-list could be a way to announce last-minute upgardes or outages as well as wiki-wide problems. -- Florian - [[ :Florian K| ]] 05:20, 20 Mar 2005 (EST) :Although the mailing list link is there, there isn't currently a list configured for this wiki, so please let me know if you do need it and I can create one then. Angela 22:33, 30 Mar 2005 (EST) templates Watching Template:Ranks being made, and watching Curps' creation of Template:DualLicenseWithCC-BySA-Dual (regardless of his vandalistic work thus far), I was wondering what the criterium or rules dictating the creation of Templates is. -- THOR 00:13, 21 Mar 2005 (EST) :As far as I am aware, we don't have any strict policies regarding the creation of content templates. Just use common sense (''Is this content really useful as a template?), add the template to the appropriate list (Memory Alpha:Navigational templates) and expect "your" template to be edited by others, just as any other contribution. The "dual licensing" template is something completely different, however. I personally think we shouldn't start this, and something as important as this does at least need a consensus in my opinion (See below). -- Cid Highwind 06:09, 21 Mar 2005 (EST) ::I agree -- Template:Ranks and others like it, such as Template:Dax, were created to correlate data in articles that occur in short series -- if someone created one that didnt work, it would be voted down or deprecated, or it would be fixed to conform to a better style (to fit canon, for example, or brevity) -- just like a regular article that was off topic. ::Licensing issues and other templates dealing with our administration structure should remain in the province of the bureaucrats though -- an archivist who wishes to enact changes in basic structures of the site like licenses and structure, should more properly do so through a discussion here or a related talk page, not by creating an anomalous template page -- that kind of action is what requires approval. This user is banned anyway, so i dont think this was a serious edit -- Captain Mike K. Bartel 10:17, 21 Mar 2005 (EST) ::: This is probably the best place to bring this up, in MA/de we created several new navigational templates recently. Most notably those on the series pages (see de:TNG Staffel 2). I find them quite useful and think it would be a nice idea for MA/en too... -- Kobi - [[ :Kobi|( )]] 10:27, 21 Mar 2005 (EST) ::Yes -- i've seen some really complex ones in use at wikipedia and at http://babylon5.wikicities.com/ -- in particular, i'd like to add some sort of season browser template -- their episode articles contain a long episode template which is a few degrees more complex than i've ever seen before. -- Captain Mike K. Bartel 10:41, 21 Mar 2005 (EST) MA/nl Hi I just hit the wrong link and was brought to MA/nl. I had to notice that Gebruiker:Buttfucker has removed content of ~100 articles and also posted pornography. Isn't there someone responsible for that wiki because that vandalism was on the 25th! -- Kobi - [[ :Kobi|( )]] 03:42, 29 Mar 2005 (EST) :I've seen it, but as my exams are comming up, I don't have the time to correct it. i'm going to need other editors on Dutch MA te help me out. So far, however, I haven't seen more than two or three editors work on MA at a time. Any suggestions? -- Redge | ''Talk'' 05:44, 29 Mar 2005 (EST) :I'm sure that some of the MA/en and /de admins (me included) could check for the most obvious vandalism from time to time if you would grant us admin rights there. If there really aren't any contributors at the time, though, it might be best to put that part of MA "on hold" (if possible)... -- Cid Highwind 08:33, 29 Mar 2005 (EST) : As long as my dutch isn't in shape, I just can assist as a spam-detector. Although, I'de love to see more dutch users online to edit and expand. -- Florian - [[ :Florian K|'' ]] 11:00, 30 Mar 2005 (EST) :Any help is welcome, but I don´t know how we can get more Dutch to the Dutch MA. I´ve tried pointing the site out on a few Star trek sites I know, but it didn´t meet with much enthousiasm. I theorize this is because most Dutch trekkies know enough English not to need a Dutch translation. -- Redge | [[User talk:Redge|''Talk]] 11:06, 3 Apr 2005 (EDT) :I´m also having a bug in the MA/nl skin I´d hoped someone could help us with. All common text is colored black in stead of white. Where do I fix that? -- Redge | ''Talk'' 11:42, 3 Apr 2005 (EDT) :: Best thing to have a synchronized CSS for all languages will be to insert a template-tag into those monobook.css/LANG pages, see Overleg MediaWiki:Monobook.css/de. This is an open issue here, too. -- Florian - ✍ talk 04:18, 14 Apr 2005 (EDT) Changing Series Pages I really think there should be a voting system for changing the long series pages, much like the Featured Articles system. These pages are a major part of MA, and if this was done, it would help to avoid vandalism. --Defiant | ''Talk'' 12:16, 30 Mar 2005 (EST) :If users would discuss page changes rather than just reverting edits without explanation as you did, perhaps it would be more productive. -- Captain Mike K. Barteltalk 12:47, 30 Mar 2005 (EST) Exactly! I very strongly believe that people should discuss changes, before they are made and that significant changes to the series pages ought be done democratically. It seems to me like we're both arguing for similar things here, Mike! I think the TOS and TNG pages should be returned to how they were before you edited them, so a vote can be taken on whether they stay like that, or if the changes you suggest are made. --Defiant | ''Talk'' 12:57, 30 Mar 2005 (EST) :I understand Defiant's point, you should make your changes to Star Trek: The Original Series/temp, work out the layout and then ask if some improvements could be made. For example I think the template:TOS-Season3 is a cool idea, however I personally don't like the numbered scheme. I suggest these edits are on hold for a while until this is discussed -- Kobi - [[ :Kobi|( )]] 13:29, 30 Mar 2005 (EST) Strange sign Why do I keep seeing this sign - "‿" (a square or rectangle)? Does anyone know? Does anyone else see lots of this sign, or is it a problem with Internet Explorer (which I use) maybe? --Defiant | ''Talk'' 08:13, 1 Apr 2005 (EST) : I see a bracket that is lies on the ground. Somehow reminds me of a sign that teachers make when a word has to be written to‿gether ... but I see it for the first time in Memory Alpha -- Kobi - [[ :Kobi|( )]] 09:29, 1 Apr 2005 (EST) :: I used Mozilla, where the sign appears as a curved underline. It seems to be that only Internet Explorer displays the symbol as a square. --Defiant | ''Talk'' 17:58, 5 Apr 2005 (EDT) :::If it's any help, I often see this strange sign in Featured Articles where quotation marks should be and always at the end of the quotation. For example, "hello‿, rather than "hello". --Defiant | ''Talk'' 16:03, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC) ::::This character is Unicode U+203F UNDERTIE, apparently a punctuation character used in Greek. Not sure why it's happening, though—perhaps somebody's dumb browser is sending a mutated curly quote mark or something. —Brent Dax 08:26, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC) (a newbie) Star Trek Related Music? We already have a section on such non-canon works such as books and games. Should we create a new section for music about Star Trek? For example Warp 11, No Kill I, Sto-Vo-Kor, and any other Star Trek related bands or music could get pages that fall into this section. --docdude316 22:48, 6 Apr 2005 (EDT) :These would be fandom bands, unlicensed works, correct? These aren't something MA accepts at this time. Licensed works are fine for inclusion in the Trek Franchise area, but not these. -- Michael Warren | ''Talk'' 08:59, 7 Apr 2005 (EDT) Battle Boxes I have noted a new user implementing so-called "battle boxes" into all our major battle pages. Whilst I understand what the user is trying to do, I find these inclusions both distracting and badly-designed, and generally unsuitable for this reference. I would note to this user (following his edit summaries of "adding Wikipedia-style battle table") that MA is not Wikipedia, and so does not follow the same style conventions. I have reverted for now, but wish to get further opinion from the rest of the Archivists. Please see http://memory-alpha.org/en/index.php?title=Operation_Return&oldid=74174 for an example. -- Michael Warren | ''Talk'' 08:59, 7 Apr 2005 (EDT) : I'd support the inclusion of a standardized sidebar which is useful to the kind of information our battle articles contain -- for example, the Wikipedia version lists casualties, there are only three or four Trek battles that we have reliable casualty numbers. -- Captain Mike K. Barteltalk 10:29, 7 Apr 2005 (EDT) :: I'd support it as well. I'd like to find a format that would better accomodate/incorporate the MA styling, but I think they could certainly work out well. We could gen up a standardized template based on the MA style and put it up on Memory Alpha:Article templates. — THOR 11:18, 7 Apr 2005 (EDT) :I'd recommend using the standard wiki-sidebar class table -- using the "class" modifier probably allows us to reformat all the sidebar tables on the sit simply by updating the style sheet -- so that's a non-issue. Just what information to put in. List of composers Could pages be created like the list of director pages for all of the people who composed music for the series and movies? -Rebelstrike2005 11:03, 7 Apr 2005 (EDT) :I'd say yes -- this is a natural outgrowth of our production information -- but suitable names for each article need to be found. -- Captain Mike K. Barteltalk 11:07, 7 Apr 2005 (EDT) :: I was just thinking of just List of DS9 composers :: Sounds like a good idea to me. Why don't we start articles like this for the many other people involved in certain aspects of Star Trek? Enzo Aquarius 18:01, 8 Apr 2005 (EDT) :: Good idea, I was also thinking of a list of writers but thought it might be too long -- Rebelstrike2005 06:12, 11 Apr 2005 (EDT) ::: Maybe we could have a Star Trek production staff list? -- Rebelstrike2005 18:05, 13 Apr 2005 (EDT) ::: I'll start creating the article soon. - Rebelstrike2005 12:54, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC) browser tables browser tables at the bottom of the screen often cause an overlap in stubby episode and novels articles that also contain a sidebar table. would it make sense to add some sort of "clear" tag directly to the tables, or to make that a characteristic of the "browser" class table's default style? The latter would require a change to the style sheet, but i don't really know anything about it. if that isn't feasible, a bot could add a clear tag (br clear="all") prior to every browser table. -- Captain Mike K. Barteltalk 11:46, 14 Apr 2005 (EDT) :Well, indeed a bot could do that, however the bots have shown that they damage tables from time to time (when they are bad coded). I will speak to Florian who applied the MA specific changes to the framework -- Kobi - [[ :Kobi|( )]] 11:58, 14 Apr 2005 (EDT) ::I think editing the stylesheet as suggested would be the better option - it's "cleaner" than an additional HTML tag on each page, doesn't need any article edits and should result in less errors in the long run. I will change the CSS, let me know if there are any problems. -- Cid Highwind 12:35, 14 Apr 2005 (EDT) Thanks Cid! Everything's working great with those tables now! -- Captain Mike K. Barteltalk Voodieh class As talk pages can be easily overlooked I'll post this here as well. The name "Voodieh" has been floating around for several years as rumors or otherwise in association with the "All Good Things..." Klingon attack cruisers, and I was curious if it is worth creating an article on it or just have it as a passing reference in the Negh'Var class article? I only say this because we do have an article on another unspoken Klingon ship class, the K'toch class. --Gvsualan 15:22, 14 Apr 2005 (EDT) :I believe the "Voodieh" term was first used for Star Trek CCG http://www.decipher.com/startrek/cardlists/alternateuniverse/large/ikcfeklhr.html. IIRC, we do have stuff from roleplaying games and the like mentioned in the background notes, so I don't see why it shouldn't be included on the Negh'Var page. -- SmokeDetector47 // ''talk'' 23:37, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC) ::Cool, I was actually trying to find the source on that. Wasnt sure if it was from an early script draft or what. Any additional links or info to add to that would be grand! --Gvsualan 05:47, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC) DVD Link Could someone please place a link to the DVD page on the Main Page, under "Other Sources"? --Defiant | ''Talk'' 20:49, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC) :I don't know if that would be appropriate. A DVD, in my opinion, is not an "other source" (as a novel or a game is), but just another way of publishing the episodes and movies. I might be in the minority, of course, but I think this needs some discussion first. -- Cid Highwind 13:01, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC) ::The Star Trek DVDs include much more than the actual episodes and movies. A great amount of behind-the-scenes trivia can be learned from them, some of which has already influenced articles here at Memory Alpha. The DVDs are probably more of an insightful source than the novels, as these present facts about canon Trek. --Defiant | ''Talk'' 15:58, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC) ::: I agree with Defiant. Some of the special features can be very useful to Memory Alpha. -- Rebelstrike2005 18:04, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC) :::: Is there anyone else who feels that the DVDs are not as resourceful as novels or games? Is there anyone else that feels that they are? Opinions would be appreciated. --Defiant | ''Talk'' 09:30, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC) :OK, you convinced me, I didn't really think about the bonus features. :) No one else seems to have any objections, so I will add a link to the main page now. -- Cid Highwind 15:03, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC) ::Thank you. --Defiant | ''Talk'' 19:50, 19 Apr 2005 (UTC) Policy Reminder - Summary field I think it is necessary to remind ourselves of the policies from time to time. Policy of the day: Always fill summary field Whenever I have a look at the "Recent changes", only about 10-20% of the edits contain an edit summary. Please, try to use that feature more often and, if possible, try to make the summary meaningful by really describing what exactly you changed on the page. Thanks. -- Cid Highwind 09:29, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC) :Also, I would discourage archivists from marking major changes to an article as "minor" -- there are a few who have never made a non-minor article edit, but also never even tried to use the summary field. -- Captain Mike K. Barteltalk 13:38, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC) Typographically correct punctuation :(moved from Talk:Benjamin Sisko: For more details on the changes I made to the punctuation in this article, see http://www.alistapart.com/articles/typography/ and http://www.alistapart.com/articles/emen/ :—Ian Adams 10:14, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC) :I think that this style brings only difficulties. It slows down to write an article and also doesn't look very good in a browser at this font size. This is not word and the simple quotation marks " do fulfil our needs. :But what I also want to address is the slowly spreading illogical quotation: Why does it have to be "The Cage," "Where No Man Has Gone Before"?? the komma has nothing to do with the article and it really slows down reading a series of references -- Kobi - [[ :Kobi|( )]] 10:56, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC) ::Actually Kobi, i prefer tht way (with punctuation correctly within the quotes) -- i believe it is also the American English standard -- Captain Mike K. Barteltalk 12:59, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC) :::Yeah, I noticed you started to use that quotation style: I also am aware that it is considered typographically correct in American English, but I wanted to address that it doesn't make sense when used in single emphasised words, and especially not in lists. I'm already semi-comfortable with having to use -yze -se -o- -er and so on, though being taught otherwise from first lesson in school, but in the case of illogical quoting I must say stop here. That is why I put it here too: I want to hear the opinion of the international visitors, maybe I'm not the only one who has difficulties to read those lists. I also noticed that people started to include full stops within links (asuming they are following the "include dots rule", so that they created links like "The Cage." -- Kobi - [[ :Kobi|( )]] 14:44, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC) ::I must take exception though to people parenthesizing an episode reference when it occurs as an object in a sentence -- for example "In (TNG:"Family"), Data met.." -- The point of parentheses is to separate a thought that is part of a sentence, obviously we can't intend to separate "Family" because it is non removable ("''In, Data met something" is not a sentence). "In "Family," Data.." or "In TNG:"Family," Data.." ::However, an episode title is a separate thought when placed at the end of a sentence, but it is still included as part of a sentence, so therefore does not deserve an extra period: ''"Data met Dr. Soong. (TNG:"Brothers")." is incorrect, because "(TNG:"Brothers")" is not a complete thought or statement -- it is a parentetical add-on to the sentence, so the correct form would be "Data met Dr. Soong. (TNG:"Brothers")" or even, possibly including it as part of the parent sentence as "Data met Dr. Soong (TNG:"Brothers")." -- but not with both having a period. -- Captain Mike K. Barteltalk 13:36, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC) :::Isn’t that defined in the MoS? ::::—Ian Adams 13:56, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC) The “style” is only more time-intensive on very long, already published articles. (I put “style” in quotes because it isn’t just a style: it’s proper English.) But then I had no problem going through and making the adjustments. When you’re writing copy from scratch, however, it takes no time at all. I just use the free tool available at http://www.textism.com/tools/textile/index.html and it is able to do all the formatting for me at the click of a button. The argument against how it looks at small font sizes is hardly applicable since the font sizing is done in ems in the style sheet — users can (and frequently do) adjust the font size in their browser. And even then, at the default size, I’d say that it actually looks quite a bit better. Certainly more legible, and definitely more professional and polished. Either way, it’s a Wiki — it’s not like we’re on a deadline. ;) :—Ian Adams 13:56, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC) ::I think usiing ' " and -- are fine. One of the points of a wiki is to use the simplest markup possible, so I'm going to go with the characters that are already on my keyboard -- also, it confuses me when i open up a file and find that this reads & #8217; & #8212; & #8217; & #8217; -- this is simply unacceptable because it makes our markup impossible to read for the casual user, for what amounts to only minor, minor characters. -- Captain Mike K. Barteltalk 14:04, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC) :::::I agree - in fact, there's a section called Keep it simple in our Manual of Style that states exactly this: HTML markup should be avoided in most circumstances. -- Cid Highwind 14:13, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC) :Oooh, touché on me (from the MoS, which I would have posted minutes ago if you guys could have stopped responding ;) ): :"For uniformity and to avoid problems with the wiki software and the searching utility, use straight quotation marks and apostrophes, and avoid curved marks such as the backtick (the so-called "smart quotes")." :Although I suppose, then, that it should be rephrased to say "use single and double primes instead of quotation marks and apostrophes". :P :But the author is right: I tried searching for "Benjamin's" (a word that came up often in the article), and it didn't pull up the article for Benjamin Sisko. I'll go ahead and re-apply the non-typographically correct single and double primes. Please don't just revert, as that will lose many grammatical and other copy corrections that I also did at the time. I said I'll handle it and I will. :) :Sorry for jumping the gun, folks! ::—Ian Adams 14:14, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC) :: Wow, that was a quick decision -- Kobi - [[ :Kobi|( )]] 14:44, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC) :::::Good question about the MoS including this, Ian -- I actually forgot the other day, when I was trying to remember how to explain to a user why I was removing mdashes -- that extra characters coded like that are examples of an HTML-style code, and to be avoided in the main articles -- maybe we could amend the MoS to clarify that, to make it clearer, because it was something i wasn't clear about right away. And to clarify points where American English (our standard) conflicts with International English, like the punctuation within quotations issue. -- Captain Mike K. Barteltalk 14:47, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC) ::::::Kobi, I agree with you on the fact it might be unwise to do so in lists (punctuate within quotes) -- did you mean parenthetical end-of-paragraph lists or what other kind of situations would you like to make an exception to this rule -- we can clarify this for a policy addition to better synthesize a preferred writing style - -Captain Mike K. Barteltalk ::::::Jeez, now it's hard to keep track of how many levels deep these conversations are. ;) ::::::Anyway, I do agree with Captain Mike on the point of punctuation within quotations, since that is proper American English; however I think it would be prudent to do the opposite (punctuation outside of quotations) in the case of links, otherwise you increase the chances of someone mistakenly making the punctuation mark a part of the link, as Kobe demonstrated. I do agree with Kobe, also, that they should be outside of quotations in the case of lists; it definitely makes it harder to read those lists when done with punctuation within quotations. How's that for a compromise? :D ::::::And Kobi, I do feel your pain — the "-yze -se -o- -er and so on" did certainly take some getting used to. :) :::::::—Ian Adams 15:08, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC) :::::::I'm suggesting to use the system of "logical quotation", it has just one additional rule: Does the dot/comma belong to the quote? It applies the same rule that is already used in American English with the question (?) and exclamation mark (!) to the comma (,) and dot (.). All other rules stay untouched. That way a list of episode references would look "Episode 1", "Episode 2", "Episode 3". -- Kobi - [[ :Kobi|( )]] 15:11, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)